'Avengers: Age Of Ultron' Is On The Road To Setting A Dangerous Precedent

By the time you read this, millions of people will have already seen Avengers: Age of Ultron. The film opened early on Thursday and by the end of its first weekend in theaters it could bring in as much as $260 million at the domestic box office alone.

That estimate is at the top of my colleague Scott Mendelson's estimate for opening weekend but considering the hype and excitement around the film (which has already earned $255 million abroad), it's not hard to believe the new Avengers film could hit those numbers. That would give Age of Ultron the highest opening weekend of all time. The film could earn $500 million globally some time next week.

While that's great news for Disney shareholders, it's not necessarily great news for the movie industry.

'Age of Ultron' will almost definitely earn more than $1 billion at the box office.

This year could see a slew of films earn over $1 billion at the global box office. Furious 7 zoomed past that benchmark a while ago and is now up to $1.35 billion. The Avengers is sure to earn over $1 billion. It will likely earn more than the $1.5 billion the first film brought in at the box office back in 2012 as sequels always see some kind of boost at the box office. Films like Jurassic World, the animated Minions and Spectre (the next James Bond movie) all have shots at crossing the billion-dollar mark and the twin juggernauts of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II and the new Star Wars film are guaranteed to bring in at least $1 billion each this winter.

The problem with multiple billion-dollar hits is that it sets the bar very high for all other films. As it becomes more accepted that a blockbuster needs to earn $1 billion to be considered a bona fide hit, movies that earn $600 million or even $800 million suddenly start to look like disappointments.

That's a problem. Studios today are pretty risk averse. For every Tomorrowland that hits theaters (an original story from Disney and director Brad Bird starring George Clooney) there are a dozen sequels and reboots. But if films like Tomorrowland fail to earn the $1 billion that investors start to expect from tent pole movies, studios will kick them to the curb.

We've already seen the demise of the mid-budget film that earns a nice $150 million to $200 million at the box office. While they still exist, they are few and far between. Fifty Shades of Grey was the rare $40 million film but it went on to be a global hit earning $570 million. Get Hard, a comedy starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, cost $40 million to make and earned just $100 million at the global box office. That will likely still mean a profit but no one will be boasting about the film's performance at parties and pitches around Hollywood.

As studios shoot for $1 billion at the box office, budgets are going to climb and so are expectations. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years we see the demise of the $100 million film. That amount will no longer seem like enough to bring in $1 billion at the box office. As studios focus on bigger, bigger, bigger, it's not hard to imagine that quality is going to nosedive.

Back in June of 2013, Steven Spielbergpredicted an implosion if the film industry when several $250 million films flop in a row decimating the industry. If $1 billion does become the expected norm, and studios push even harder to make bigger films to hit that mark, Spielberg's vision could become a reality. At some point, people will start to experience blockbuster fatigue and some of these mega-movies will fail.

Both Marvel (which is owned by Disney and is the studio behind films like The Avengers, Thor and the upcoming Ant-Man) and DC (Batman, Superman) have slated their superhero films through 2020. As those films get bigger and the stakes get higher, Hollywood becomes even more of a high-wire act then it already is. The fall out might not be pretty.